There has recently been a revival of interest in ‘naturalizing’ ethics. A naturalization seeks to vindicate ethical realism — the idea that ethical judgments can be true reflections of a moral reality — without violating the naturalist constraint that science sets the limits of ontology. The recent revival has been prompted by examples of successful scientific reduction, and by the emergence of new, nonreductive naturalist strategies. In this paper, I argue against such naturalist approaches to ethics. My argument builds on (...) the traditional one offered by G.E. Moore, namely that a naturalization would fail to respect an existing difference between the meanings of moral and naturalistic terms. I defend this line of argument against the common claim that it cannot block ‘synthetic’ property identities, ones grounded not in meaning equivalences but in empirical discoveries. I then go on to show that the Moorean argument can make trouble even for recent revisionist and nonreductive naturalist approaches. (shrink)

The normative dimension of language and thought has been cited recently in arguments against naturalist reductions of the intentional--of meaning, belief, and desire. These arguments have been met with much scepticism, primarily because their proponents say little about the kind of 'normativity' on which they depend. There is, however, a rich tradition in ethics of thinking about the nature of the normative, and why it might pose a problem for naturalist reduction. ;In this dissertation, I bring the discussions in language (...) and ethics together, arguing that doing so lends clarity and plausibility to the objections to naturalist reduction in both fields. In Part I, I draw from ethics to characterize normativity, and to explain how it provides a barrier to naturalistic reduction. In doing so, I respond to two common criticisms of irreducibility arguments in ethics: that they only show the irreducibility of our concepts of the ethical, not of ethical properties; and that they depend on outdated views of conceptual analysis. I argue that both objections misfire, though for interesting reasons, and that the anti-reduction argument succeeds. ;In Part II I use the characterization of normativity to shed light on recent arguments against reducing the intentional. I examine two prominent authors who have advanced such arguments, Saul Kripke and Donald Davidson. In addition to fleshing out and defending each of their arguments, I develop a general challenge to any reductive approach. The proposal is that intentional items have an essential capacity to define a context of reasons, something to which no naturalist reduction can do justice. ;In Part III I consider a new trend toward non-reductive forms of naturalism. I argue that most current non-reductive accounts also fail to accommodate the requisite normativity. But if the non-reductive, naturalist approach is developed in a certain direction, one which depends on the idea of response-dependency, it can capture just the kind of normativity that is needed. In closing, I briefly defend such an approach to both intentionality and value. (shrink)

In short, the anticipated harm (death) to Ms. A of telling her about her child greatly outweighs the harm she will experience by being lied to. Also, the latter harm can be ameliorated; the former can not.

In my field, animal developmental biology, and in what could be regarded as its “deep time derivative,” the evolutionary biology of the animal body plan, there exist two kinds of experimentally supported causal explanation. These can be described as “rooted” and “unrooted.” Rooted causal explanation provides logical links to and from the genomic regulatory code, extending right into the genomic sequences that control regulatory gene expression. The genomic regulatory code ultimately determines the developmental process in a direct way, since subsequent (...) developmental events all depend directly and specifically on what regulatory genes are being expressed and where in the developing organism they are being expressed.. (shrink)

What are we to make of the claim that we often hear, that there is no such thing as business ethics? This essay first examines two arguments that might be in people's minds in making such a claim — that business is a game, and hence the ordinary constraints of morality do not apply, and that one cannot survive in business if one is too ethical. The critique of these arguments begins the process of making clear what business ethics is. (...) The paper then proceeds in a more positive vein to define and explain for the sceptic what business ethics is. Everyone must confront the question, what should I do in my business relationships? Business ethics is defined, then, as the effort to develop Socratically one's answer to this question, that is, through the critical examination of alternatives. In the process of explaining this notion, several other senses in which someone might say that there is no such thing as business ethics are explored and the basic distinction between the moral point of view and ethical egoism is introduced. (shrink)

Both Arne Naess and Warwick Fox have argued that deep ecology, in terms of “Selfrealization,” is essentially nonmoral. I argue that the attainment of the ecological Self does not render morality in the richest sense “superfluous,” as Fox suggests. To the contrary, the achievement of the ecological Self is a precondition for being a truly moral person, both from the perspective of a robust Kantian moral frameworkand from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. The opposition between selfregard and morality is (...) a false one. The two are the same. The ecological philosophy of Naess and Fox is an environmental ethic in the grand tradition of moral philosophy. (shrink)

The Material Culture of the Northern Sea Peoples in Israel. By Ephraim Stern. Harvard Semitic Museum Publications, Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant, vol. 5. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2013. Pp. ix + 74, illus. $29.50.

The successes of molecular developmental biology over the last ten years have been particularly impressive in those directions favored by its major paradigms. New technologies have both guided and been guided by the progress of the field. I review briefly some of the major insights into embryonic development that have derived from research in four specific areas: early embryogenesis of various forms; “pattern formation”; evolutionary conservation of regulatory elements; and spatial mechanisms of gene regulation. There remain many major problem areas, (...) some of which may require new orientations to solve. (shrink)

Both Arne Naess and Warwick Fox have argued that deep ecology, in terms of “Selfrealization,” is essentially nonmoral. I argue that the attainment of the ecological Self does not render morality in the richest sense “superfluous,” as Fox suggests. To the contrary, the achievement of the ecological Self is a precondition for being a truly moral person, both from the perspective of a robust Kantian moral frameworkand from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. The opposition between selfregard and morality is (...) a false one. The two are the same. The ecological philosophy of Naess and Fox is an environmental ethic in the grand tradition of moral philosophy. (shrink)

In arecent article, Michael Murray critiques several versions of universalism-that is, the doctrine that in the end all persons are saved. Of particular interest to Murray is Thomas Talbott’s version of universalism (called SU1 by Murray), which puts forward a strategy for ensuring universal salvation that purports to preserve the autonomy of the creatures saved. Murray argues that, on the contrary, the approach put forward in SU1 is not autonomy-preserving at all. I argue that this approach preserves the autonomy of (...) the creature at least as well as the approach posited by the traditional doctrine of hell. Since SU1 clearly does more to preserve the well-being of the creature, it follows that, on the assumption that God loves all His creatures, SU1 is preferable to the doctrine of hell. (shrink)

Developmental processes in complex animals are directed by a hardwired genomic regulatory code, the ultimate function of which is to set up a progression of transcriptional regulatory states in space and time. The code specifies the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) that underlie all major developmental events. Models of GRNs are required for analysis, for experimental manipulation and, most fundamentally, for comprehension of how GRNs work. To model GRNs requires knowledge of both their overall structure, which depends upon linkage amongst regulatory (...) genes, and the modular building blocks of which GRNs are heirarchically constructed. The building blocks consist of basic transcriptional control processes executed by one or a few functionally linked genes. We show how the functions of several such building blocks can be considered in mathematical terms, and discuss resolution of GRNs by both “top down” and “bottom up” approaches. BioEssays 24:1118–1129, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In response to powerful criticisms of older arguments, contemporary defenders of the Church’s traditional stance on homosexuality have fashioned a new kind of argument based upon the special relationship God created between the sexes. In this paper we examine two recent incarnations of this kind of argument and show that both fail to demonstrate the inherent immorality of homosexual relationships, and at most demonstrate that homosexual relationships are inferior to heterosexual relationships in certain respects. At the end of the paper (...) we argue that a good God would have reason to make a certain proportion of humanity homosexual in order to unmask sexist myths. In this way homosexuality could itself strengthen, rather than weaken, the special relationship God created between the sexes. (shrink)

Despite substantial controversy, the use of futility judgments in medicine is quite common, and has been backed by the implementation of hospital policies and professional guidelines on medical futility. The controversy arises when health care professionals (HCPs) consider a treatment futile which patients or families believe to be worthwhile: should HCPs be free to refuse treatments in such a case, or be required to provide them? Most physicians seem convinced that professional autonomy protects them from being forced to provide treatments (...) they judge medically futile, given the lack of patient benefit as well as the waste of medical resources involved. The argument from professional autonomy has been presented in a number of articles, but it has not been subjected to much critical scrutiny. In this paper I distinguish three versions of the argument: 1) that each physician should be free to exercise his or her own medical judgment; 2) that the medical profession as a whole may provide futility standards to govern the practice of its members; and 3) that the moral integrity of each physician serves as a limit to treatment demands. I maintain that none of these versions succeeds in overcoming the standard objection that futility determinations involve value judgments best left to the patients, their designated surrogates, or their families. Nor do resource considerations change this fact, since they should not influence the properly patient-centered judgment about futility. (shrink)

In the maximal form of indirect development found in many taxa of marine invertebrates, embryonic cell lineages of fixed fate and limited division capacity give rise to the larval structures. The adult arises from set‐aside cells in the larva that are held out from the early embryonic specification processes, and that retain extensive proliferative capacity. We review the locations and fates of set‐aside cells in two protostomes, a lophophorate and a deuterostome. The distinct adult body plans of many phyla develop (...) from homologous set‐aside cells within homologous larvae. We argue that the stocks from which these phyla arose utilized these respective larvae, and the diversity of their adult body plans reflects diverse pattern formation processes executed in their set‐aside cell populations. Chordates and arthropods develop directly, but share adult characters with indirectly developing phyla. Thus the deuterostome and protostome stocks that were ancestral to chordates and arthropods, respectively, also utilized maximal indirect development. (shrink)

The author outlines a five-step method for teaching ethical reasoning in undergraduate ethic courses. The purpose of the method is to incite student engagement with abstract issues and to allow students to see the usefulness of ethical theory in their everyday lives. To accomplish this, the method aids students in the development of theories on their own positions concerning ethical issues.

How do people decide what category an artifact belongs to? Previous studies have suggested that adults and, to some degree, children, categorize artifacts in accordance with the design stance, a categorization system which privileges the designer’s original intent in making categorization judgments. However, these studies have all been conducted in Western, technologically advanced societies, where artifacts are mass produced. In this study, we examined intuitions about artifact categorization among the Shuar, a hunter-horticulturalist society in the Amazon region of Ecuador. We (...) used a forced-choice method similar to previous studies, but unlike these studies, our scenarios involved artifacts that would be familiar to the Shuar. We also incorporated a community condition to examine the possible effect of community consensus on how artifacts are categorized. The same scenarios were presented to university student participants in the UK. Across populations and conditions, participants tended to categorize artifacts in terms of a creator’s intent as opposed to a differing current use. This lends support to the view that the design stance may be a universal feature of human cognition. However, we conclude with some thoughts on the limitations of the present method for studying artifact concepts. (shrink)